Videographic Criticism and Reflexive Objects & Practices

The Screen Work Group, the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Digital Humanities and the Department of Film, Theatre & Television present:

“Videographic Criticism and Reflexive Objects & Practices”In recent years, videographic criticism, through its core techniques of compilation, appropriation, imitation, and manipulation, has emerged as a central mode of reflexive engagement with audiovisual phenomena. In this presentation, Jason Mittell looks at both his own and others’ videographic work that foregrounds reflexivity, particularly in adding dimensions of deception, obfuscation, or ambiguous accuracy to our critical toolbox to explore and constitute “fake reality media” that performatively feigns authenticity as part of its storytelling. I argue that videographic criticism offers new and exciting creative and analytical possibilities that specifically foreground reflexivity to reveal aspects of media practice and experience that are difficult to discern through traditional critical writing.

Professor Mittell, Professor of Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College, is a leading television researcher, video essayist and digital humanist. He is the co-creator of Scholarship in Sound and Image, the famous workshop on videographic criticism, Project Manager for [in]Transition and the editor of the innovative series Videographic Books from the Lever Press. His research interests include television history and criticism, media and cultural history, narrative theory, genre theory, videographic criticism, animation and children’s media, videogames, digital humanities, and new media studies & technological convergence. He is the author of Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture, (Routledge, 2004), Television and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2010), Complex Television: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (NYU Press, 2015), and Narrative Theory and ADAPTATION. (Bloomsbury, 2017), co-author with Christian Keathley and Catherine Grant of The Videographic Essay, and the co-editor of How to Watch Television (NYU Press, 2013; second edition, 2020).

A drinks reception will conclude the event.